


Anger

by diettakramer



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Episode: s06e15 As You Were, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-20
Updated: 2020-11-20
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:20:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27621965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/diettakramer/pseuds/diettakramer
Summary: After Buffy breaks up with him, Spike doesn't deal with it very well.
Relationships: Spike/Buffy Summers
Kudos: 8





	Anger

The TV goes first, with a boot to the screen that shatters the old glass into confetti. He can still remember the warmth of her next to him on the couch, the one night she’d actually deigned to stay after they had tussled, and how they had watched an old black and white movie on the slightly staticky screen, some old horror shlock that brought out the critic in her, talking about how ridiculous a fifty-foot monster would be, how easy it would be to just stab the ankles and knock it down, kill the thing dead with enough time for burgers and chips after. He’d found her work-related morbidity sweet then, when he was the receiver of her stories rather than the object of her wrath. Now the hunk of plastic and metal lay shattered, like his idiotic dreams that their dalliances could ever lead to anything good. 

Next go the records off the stone shelf, the Ramones and the Sex Pistols and the ones he wouldn’t admit to having. He throws them one by one, frisbeeing them across the crypt to crack against the wall, the memories cracking with them, fragmenting into shards that could never be put back together. She'd shocked him one night, when it had been colder than a witch’s tit out. Grabbing an album off the shelf, she’d sashayed her sweet bum over to the record player, keeping her choice secret until those unmistakable first notes flowed out, whipping around with a coy grin on her face to see his expression. 

She’d grabbed his hand and hauled him up, pulling him closer than he’d ever though they’d be with clothes on. She was a terrible dancer but that didn’t matter. She'd been happy. He was sure of it. Then he remembered that night in the alley by the Bronze, when he’d mocked her about the deaths of her sisters in arms, those girls he’d killed without a second thought. And the time with that horrid demon, forcing out everyone’s secrets like a bad hangover. Back then, dancing was the fight, the kill, the blood. Now, he would have given anything to be able to dance with her again. Spinning round the dance floor, smoke free, just the two of them. He almost wishes he’d let her burn that night. Maybe he wouldn’t be the one burning now. 

On the shelf under where the records were, he finds the poems he’d written about her, the ill-conceived scribbles of a man drunk on love and booze, the lines comparing her to the moonlight and the darkness and all the shite that made him sound like Drusilla on one of her better days. He pauses to peruse the pages, stained with tears and tequila. He still uses ink pens when he can find them. The paper crinkles between his tense fingertips, rendering the words nearly unreadable. He'd never have let her read them anyway. Even when they were...whatever they were, he couldn’t forget her disgust at the shrine he’d made to her of stolen sweaters and dime store wigs. Never wanted to see that look on her pretty face again. Still, it would have been better than the pity she had when she... 

He whirls around, searches for something else to destroy. He spies a bottle of bourbon, half drunk, like the one they shared that night she was trying to find her way in the world again, desperate to find a purpose beyond slaying, for some odd reason. Her little noises were the best part. Now the bottle goes the way of the rest of it, smashing against the crypt wall, sending wet glass shards back at him, slicing against his too white skin. The sickly-sweet smell of the alcohol makes him remember her soft smile, one of the few he could pry out of her before everything went to hell in a handbasket. 

He stoops to the ground, grabs a pen-sized piece of glass, and goes at the couch next, trying to cut out the memories they’d put in it, those few times she’d let him be soft with her, the simple touches and caresses she so rarely allowed. One night they hadn’t even fucked, simply lay together, him tracing the bruises on her forearm from some nasty she’d killed, her staring blankly into the night, thinking god knows what. She may have let him into her body, but she kept her mind locked up tighter than a nun’s cunt. Maybe if she’d just let him in, even just a smidge, things wouldn't have gotten so cock-eyed, so messed up that he couldn’t even recognize himself anymore. 

When the couch is nothing more than bits of fluff and fabric, he sticks his arms in and pulls, imagining the stuffing is his heart being ripped out. He throws it in the puddle of bourbon and glass, mushing it with his boot heel, stomping out whatever emotions might still be left. For good measure, he takes the lighter out of his pocket and drops a flame on the pile. He throws in a few other pieces of detritus. It feels right, flames licking away the ruins of his life. 

How has it come to this? How has she made him into this sad, sorry little excuse of a man? He knows he’s always been love’s bitch but this has taken things too far, even for him. 

As the flames splutter and spit, quickly consuming the remnants of their not-a-relationship, he slumps against the wall, his strength leaving him like water down a drain. He feels tired, as heavy as the sack of bones he is. She'd finally realized what he’d hoped she never would: that as much as he desired her, wanted her, craved her, he never really deserved her. These memories he has, their singular domestic moments, are just ephemera, breath on a cold winter’s night. They were never real and would never last. Just like him.


End file.
